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Tag: England

Felicity went to visit a professor at Cambridge University today, so we went for a long walk through the interesting city afterwards. Unlike Norwich, the central part of town is swarming with tourists, and there are students from all over the world making it a much more cosmopolitan place.Continue reading Murray Edwards College Cambridge

Today we completed the final section of the Wherryman’s Way, so we have now walked the whole distance from Norwich to Great Yarmouth. We started by catching the midday bus to Chedgrave, and disembarked outside the White Horse Pub where we had ended our walk on our previous visit.Continue reading Wherryman’s Way – Chedgrave to Reedham

I was hoping to go for a bike ride today while Felicity was at the university, but when I checked the weather forecast it showed there was a band of heavy rain due to arrive around mid-day. The possibility of ending up miles from civilisation wet and cold didn’t seem attractive, so I reluctantly decided to give it a miss. I didn’t want to spend the whole day indoors though, so I set out for a run soon after breakfast.Continue reading Whitlingham

This weekend the woman Felicity is working with in Norwich invited us to stay the night with her and her husband at their cottage on the northern coast of Norfolk. We decided to catch the train to Sheringham and walk to Wells along the Norfolk Coast Path.Continue reading Wells-next-the-Sea

When I looked for places to visit near Great Yarmouth, the first place that caught my attention was Burgh Castle. It isn’t actually a castle, but instead a Roman coastal fort that they called Gariannonum.Continue reading Burgh Castle

The third of the three inner city walks heads west from the central market. One of the first interesting places was the site of Bethel Hospital, the first provincial mental institution in the country, opened in 1713 with the aim of treating patients rather than just locking them up. It operated until the 1980s, and has since been converted to apartments.Continue reading Norwich Nooks and Crannies West

Travelling by bus to Surlingham from Norwich took us about 10 minutes, which was a lot easier than the almost two hour trip on foot in the other direction last week. For the first part of our walk we were sharing the path with about a dozen other people in a group which was a bit frustrating because every time we stopped to look at anything they would pass us then block the track when we got going again. Eventually they turned off and we could walk at our normal pace.Continue reading Wherryman’s Way – Surlingham to Chedgrave

As we were walking home from Sainsbury’s last week, we crossed a bridge over another old railway cutting that has been converted to an inviting shared walk/cycleway. Felicity was at the university today, so I hired a bike and set of to explore the area south and west of Norwich.Continue reading Bowthorpe

We decided to spend a day in the countryside for a change today, and took a train to Reedham on the Wherryman’s Way. We would have gone back to Surlingham to continue where we stopped last week, but it is a bank holiday here in England and the normal bus service is not running.

The second Nooks & Crannies walk goes to the south of the market, and is 2.5km in length. It starts at the Royal Arcade, which was opened in 1899 and is considered an Art Nouveau masterpiece. The glass tiling and mahogany shopfronts have been described as a ‘fragment of the Arabian nights’.Continue reading Norwich Nooks and Crannies South

After my big mission yesterday I was hoping for an easy day exploring the city, but Felicity was keen to start walking one of the long-distant trails leading out towards the coast, so we spent another exhausting day of touristing. Wherries were barges with large black sails, used to transport goods up rivers to inland towns, and played an important part in the history of Norwich.Continue reading Wherryman’s Way – Norwich to Surlingham

On our first full day in Norwich, Felicity went in to the university to begin work, so I took the opportunity to go for a bike ride. I ended up travelling over 65 kilometers, probably the longest ride I have ever done.Continue reading Marriott’s Way

I was hoping to find a fossilised plesiosaur on the beach today, but it would have to have been a baby one if we wanted to carry it home. We did find a bunch of ammonites and bought back a few smaller samples.Continue reading Lyme Regis

We spent yesterday in Southampton visiting the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship that sunk in 1545. I had seen a documentary about the discovery and raising of the ship in 1982, so was very interested now that it is on public display. The approximately 600 large oaks that were felled to build her came from the New Forest area where we have been staying.Continue reading Weymouth

Last night we took a bus from Victoria Station to Southampton and on to the village of Lindhurst where we are staying with friends in their cottage for a couple of days.Continue reading Minstead New Forest